Perseverance in Persecution // Mark 6:1-29

In this sermon, Pastor discusses the themes of rejection and persecution as exemplified in Mark 6, where Jesus faces disbelief in his hometown and ultimately sends out the twelve disciples to preach the gospel. Despite their authority and miraculous works, they are warned to expect rejection, akin to the experience of John the Baptist, who was killed for his truth-telling. Pastor emphasizes the necessity of having our identity rooted in Christ, rather than in worldly acceptance, and the importance of sharing the gospel even in the face of opposition. Ultimately, believers are called to embrace the cost of discipleship, knowing that faithfulness to Christ may lead to suffering, but should not deter them from their mission.

Transcript

We're in mark 6:1-29 this morning.

If you want to go ahead and stand with me, we're going to read. It's 29 verses, so it's going to take a minute. So, you know, just want to make sure you're awake for the sermon this morning. All right. Chapter six.

He went away from there and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. And on the Sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue. And many who heard him were astonished, saying, where did this man get these things? What is the wisdom given to him? How are such mighty works done by his hands?

Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, Joseph and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us? And they took offense at him. And Jesus said to them, a prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and among his relatives and his own household. And he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them.

And he marveled because of their unbelief. And he went about among the villages teaching. And he called the twelve and began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over unclean spirits. He charged them to take nothing for their journey except a staff, no bread, no bag, no money, and their belts, but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics. And he said to them, whenever you enter a house, stay there until you depart from there.

And if any place will not receive you, and they will not listen to you when you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them. So they went out and proclaimed that people should repent. And they cast out many demons and anointed with oil, many of who were sick and healed them.

King Herod heard of it, for Jesus name had become known. Some said John the Baptist had been raised from the dead. That is why these miraculous powers are at work in him. But others said he is Elijah. And others said he is a prophet, like the one of the prophets of old, like one of the prophets of old.

But when Herod heard of it, he said, John, whom I beheaded has been raised. For it was Herod who had sent and seized John and bound him in prison for the sake of Herodias, his brother Philips wife, because he married her. For John had been saying to Herod, it is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife. And Herodias had a grudge against him and wanted to put him to death. But she could not.

For Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, he kept him safe. When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed, and yet he heard him gladly. But an opportunity came when Herod, on his birthday, gave a banquet for his nobles and military commanders and the leading men of Galilee. For when Herodias daughter came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guest. And the king said to the girl, ask me for whatever you wish and I will give it to you.

And he vowed to her, whatever you ask me, I will give you up to half of my kingdom. That should sound familiar with you if you were here for Esther this summer. And she went out and said to her mother, for what should I ask? And she said, the head of John the Baptist. And she came in immediately with haste to the king and said, I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter.

The king was exceedingly sorry, but because of his oaths and his guests, he did not want to break his word to her. And immediately the king sent an executioner with orders to bring John's head. He went and beheaded him in the prison and brought his head on a platter and gave it to the girl. And the girl gave it to her mother. When the disciples heard of it, they came and took his body and laid it in a tomb.

You may be seated.

Well, we have been handed the same message that and the same message and mission that is found in this passage. This passage is broken into kinderg of three groups. Right? We have Jesus coming to Nazareth and being rejected in Nazareth for the message that he is preaching. And then he sends out the twelve and twos to preach the gospel, to tell people to repent, to show, to show the need for Jesus and to show the need for repentance.

And then we have the death of John the Baptist. And John the Baptist preached Jesus, right. He preached the coming of the Messiah. He preached that there was going to be one that would come after him, that would be even greater. He preached repentance for Israel and to turn toward the person who was coming after him, the one that was greater than him.

This message and mission is the same message and mission that we were given in Matthew 20 819 20, the great commission, where it says, go and therefore make disciples of all nations. Right. That is the mission that we have been given. The message that we have been given. This is the same mission and message that we have been handed down.

But what we see here is that there is a cost to that mission and message. There is a cost of following Christ, and that those who follow him and those who preach his message, preach the gospel that does. Those who go out and tell people the truth and share the word of God with them preach Jesus, face rejection and persecution in their life.

This morning we're going to be looking at these three different sections. They're going to cover how we as believers. If you're a believer in the room, you might face rejection and persecution from family and friends. You might face rejection and persecution from the world. And also when feeling those rejection from family and friends in the world, you might be thinking to yourself, what are the limits that you are going to experience facing that rejection and persecution?

We're going to look at that this morning. I remember going into ministry, and I might have shared this before, but going into ministry, I had family members. I had one particular family member who came up to me and said that I lived in a dream world and that when he heard that I was going into ministry, he said, that is the stupidest thing that you could ever do because you live in a dream world and God doesn't exist. God is a fantasy and a fairy tale, and you're going to work for a fantasy and a fairy tale you might have experienced. I had friends.

I've had friends who, since I've been in ministry, our relationships have dwindled because they found out, I guess, that I'm all in for Jesus, right? They found out that I'm all in for Jesus, and they're like, well, maybe I don't want to be friends with you anymore because then I can't do all the things that I want to do around you. I experienced this, too, and I was, I refereed football for eight years, and, and I would get to games, I'd be hanging out with other referees in the locker room. So usually on Friday nights in high school games, I don't know how they do it here in Kansas, but in Texas they've got seven other officials on the field. And so we'd be hanging out in the locker room, and inevitably, usually within probably the first ten minutes, it would come out.

They'd ask, hey, what do you do? Or something like that. And the whole while they were there, maybe 1015 minutes, they're in there cussing and joking and talking about women and what they're gonna do after the game on a Friday night. And then they would ask, what does everybody do? And I'd be like, I'm a pastor.

And they'd be like, oh, sorry, pastor, I had no idea. I take it all back. I take it all back. But then there'd be this, like, okay, well, we can't really include him. They might all go out after the game for drinks.

No invite, which is fine. I wanted to get home to my family, but there's a cost to following Christ. And when you preach the word, when you share the gospel of Jesus, you're going to face rejection and persecution in the world. And this morning I want us to look at the first six verses real quick and talk about how we face rejection and persecution. Within our own family and friends.

And we face our. We face persecution and rejection from our family and friends, just as Jesus did. I mean, Jesus, the messiah, right? The God of the universe. He's going to his hometown.

He's going. He's walking to Nazareth, right? It says that he went away from there and came to his hometown, Nazareth. And the disciples were with him. And he's preaching.

The Sabbath comes and he gets up and he's talking about. He's preaching in. And teaching in the synagogue. The same message that he had been preaching throughout the land. And many heard him and were astonished, saying, where did this.

Where did these. Where did this man get these things? What wisdom? What is the wisdom given to him? How are such mighty works done by his hands?

Then I want us to recognize or see that instead of just like the. Just like the Pharisees question where the power came from. And they called it a demonic power. They dismiss his claims, his authority, his power, the miracles that he has done, because they are familiar with him.

It says that they ask, is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James and Joseph and Judas and Simon? Are not his sisters here with us? Right? Is this not the guy that grew up in Nazareth? Is this not the same guy that we've known for most of our life?

Where did all this come from? And instead of contributing it to God, they take offense, right? They take offense. Verses three. At the end of verse three, it says, they took offense.

And this is so often. So often, what we see now. I want us to stop here real quick. I'm going to, side note, step out of what I'm preaching on. And like I do oftentimes, I did it last week, talking about Jehovah's Witnesses.

I want us to talk about verse three, Mark six three, and the catholic belief. I'm not going to ask you to raise your hand, but I'm sure several people came from catholic. From a catholic background. And that's okay. I do believe that Catholics can be Christians.

And nobody's going to hate you for it. But there is a catholic belief called the perpetual virginity of Maryland. All right? And so this is just, like, a teaching moment here. The perpetual virginity of Mary is that it's the belief that Mary was.

Was a virgin, which we would affirm. Mary was a virgin before she had Christ, then got examined, and was found to be a virgin again even after the birth of Christ, and then never had relations with her husband and continued forever to be a virgin. So that's a catholic belief. It's called the perpetual virginity of Mary. You're welcome to look it up.

There's a lot of evidences for this in the Catholic, where they do these hermeneutical gymnastics. That's what we like to call in the theological world, wherever it's a big term for taking scripture and just kind of making it fit to your narrative. The perpetual virginity of Mary first showed up in the proto evangel of James in the third century. Okay? It's an apocryphal work.

It's an apocryphal work. That was in the third century. That's the first evidence, the earliest evidence of the confession of the perpetual virginity of Maryland. Okay? It also has been deemed as a heretical work because there's so many errors in that that we don't believe that it could be.

We don't believe that it could be inspired by the word of God because there's so many errors in it. Things like saying that Herod lived in Bethlehem, and the wise men came to Bethlehem to seek herod, when clearly all of scripture says that he lived in Jerusalem. Right. The wise men went there.

That's just one of many problems with that apocryphal work.

We believe that Jesus had brothers and sisters because a plain reading of the text in Mark six three and other places in the gospel says that he had brothers and sisters. Right. One of the things that another thing that Catholics say is, well, this doesn't really mean that he had brothers and sisters. They were actually his cousins. Except there's a word for cousins in Greek that isn't worked here, that isn't used here.

They used the word for brother and sister. The other thing is that they were stepkids, that Joseph was married before and had kids before Maryland, and that they were all step kids. Well, there's no evidence to that. And so plain reading of scripture shows that Jesus had brothers and sisters. So that's how we're going to walk forward, reading scripture, plain view of scripture.

We're going to believe that the Bible is true and that he had brothers and sisters. All right, so I'm going to get back over here to preaching session. I just. Sometimes when you walk in, when you, when you're walking through scripture, I think it's important to address some of these theological things that you might hear as you go throughout life and talk about them. That way you're informed, and if somebody talks to you about it, you'll know a little bit more about it.

There's a lot to that topic, though. All right, so Jesus is back to normal. He's preaching on the Sabbath. He's teaching on the Sabbath in the synagogue. And they question how.

They question how is he able to do all these things? Where is the wisdom coming from? And how are such mighty works done in his hands? And their answer is to dismiss all of this because they are familiar with Christ. They can't believe that God would be present among him.

And they take offense. They take offense. Now, remember, I talked about how your relationship, in my relationships, how people have taken offense with me. Maybe you have experienced that. Relationships that happen after you come to Christ, relationships that no longer exists for you.

Maybe you had friends that you had before you came to Christ. Then you came to Christ and things changed for you. Priorities changed. And those friends that didn't know Jesus tended to drift away. That happens to all of us.

When you come to Christ. If it's not happening to you, if there isn't opposition there, if there isn't friction in your relationships with unbelievers, in what they believe and what we believe and how we live and how they live, you should be looking at how you're following Jesus because. Because what I have found. What I have found, and I'm sure what you've experienced, that as you follow Jesus, as you follow Jesus, your relationships with others, as you call people to repentance, as you call people, as you point them to Jesus in your relationships, as you preach the gospel to them, there is friction. As you choose to not go out and party on the weekends, or as you choose to get your life ready and you overcome an addiction to alcohol, or you overcome an addiction to drugs, and that was what you and your buddies did, and yet you desire Jesus more, so you pursue him more.

Those friendships are going to have tension, and they're going to fall apart because they're either not going to want to acknowledge Jesus as savior and they're not going to want to continue to hear about him from you, or they're going to say, I don't recognize you anymore. I don't know who you are. I don't know who this person is. And that's what they're doing to Jesus right here. They take offense oftentimes in relationships.

That's how it happens, is offense is taken and relationships are broken.

It goes on to say in verse five that he could do no work there except that he laid hands on a few sick people and healed them. And he marveled because of their unbelief. And this is not because he couldn't do work. He couldn't do miracles. Obviously he did miracles, but it is because he knew that it wouldn't change anything.

The faith that was present all around Israel that we have seen, right. Last week, we talked about it. The woman who needed to be healed had such great faith that she said in her mind, if I just touch Jesus garment, I'll be healed. And what does jesus say to her? That it wasn't the magical touching of the garment, that it was her faith that healed her.

Her faith in the person of Jesus and the work that he could do. And so he's here in his hometown, and there's no faith, or there's very little because only a few are being healed. And so it's not that he couldn't do work. It's that there was no faith. And he knew that no matter what he did, he could do tremendous miracles and that they've already heard about, but it wouldn't change their hearts.

And so sometimes, sometimes we see that even within our family and our friends, our closest family and friends, it's the hardest to share the gospel with. It's the hardest because they know us. They know what we were like before Jesus, and they don't understand why we're pursuing and desiring to become like Christ.

And they don't know and understand. And maybe they don't like how we're changing because our lives are now beginning to reflect Christ, which reflects on them and how they're living.

Jesus marveled, marveled at their unbelief. And sometimes, sometimes something can be so clear to us that we don't understand why other people can't see it. I see this in counseling, as a pastor, that I see this in my own family when talking with family members. I see this in friends, where I marvel at their unbelief. I've got a brother and sister that were raised in the church for 18 years, went to church every Sunday, every Sunday night, Wednesday, sometimes Tuesday, sometimes Thursday.

We spent basically all our lives at the church. It felt like sometimes, which was fantastic. And I marvel at their unbelief I marvel at their unbelief and I pray for them. I desire them to come to Jesus.

But this can also happen to us as believers, as we. This marveling at other people's unbelief is not a bad thing. Because as you're advancing in discipleship, discipleship is a process, right? Not everybody starts at the same place. It's the reason why when a person walks in, I talked about the whole hat thing last week, walking in the church wearing a hat and somebody speaking to them.

That's a metaphor, guys. It's a metaphor that people walk in off the street broken. They don't know what it is to desire Jesus. They don't know who Jesus is. They might have heard of him, they might have heard of a church, and they're walking in for the first time, broken, right?

Discipleship is a process. They're not going to look and talk and feel like a person who has been following Jesus for 20 years. And we shouldn't expect them to do that. We should lean in and encourage, because that's the moment. Those are the moments that we need to encourage that.

And as you advance in your discipleship, as you advance in your desire and getting closer to Christ, you might do that faster than others. And you'll see. You'll see that as you advance in your discipleship, as you advance down this path of following Jesus, you're going to start to see how other people are on a slower journey than you or how other people who seem to have been strong in the faith. Maybe you're going to start wondering, man, do they even know Jesus?

Discipleship is a process. And one of the things that I loved about seminary, and I think, I wish everyone could spend four years studying intensely the Bible and scripture. Because one of the things that I loved about seminary is it took my spiritual life. And I feel like it walked it down 1015 years that if I had been doing it by myself because I was able to spend that time. And I honestly, I feel honored and grateful to God that I had the opportunity.

And I understand not everyone can do that.

But as a pastor, you recognize that discipleship as a process. And as you're walking down that path, you're going to start being. You should marvel at unbelief, but it also should stir our desire for evangelism and our desire to see people come to know Jesus. It should stir our desire to spread the message of Jesus. And Jesus faces this rejection in Nazareth from this rejection and persecution because it says that they took offense at him he faces this, and he turns around and he tells the twelve, go out and preach to the world.

Go out. He goes out. He sends them out. Go out and preach to Israel.

In mark 6713, this next section of scripture that we're going to look at shows that Jesus doesn't just have a desire for the people of his hometown, but also a desire for evangelism and a mission for evangelism in us. As we grow in our faith, we are to go and evangelize, go and partake in the mission that he was on. He calls the twelve, and he sends them out two by two, giving them authority over unclean spirits. And he charges them to take nothing for their journey except a staff. No bread, no bag, no money in their belts.

He is wanting them to have full dependence on God. This isn't meant to be. This isn't meant to be prescriptive, that everyone who goes out and shares the word, it shouldn't take anything with them. Right? It's descriptive of what he is telling them to do, because he wants to demonstrate, he wants them to learn what it's like to have full dependence on.

On God, full dependence on him in this mission. And the reason is because our identity. Our identity should be in Jesus.

Our desire should be for him. Our identity should be in him. And no matter what the world, no matter what happens in the world, how the rejections we face, the persecutions we might face, no matter what is going on in our personal life, we should have full dependence on God. I heard recently, I heard, I think it was last week, one of the singers, for one direction, he got. I think he was kicked out of the band or something out, or the labor label dropped him.

Okay. His identity was in his music. His identity was in his music and his fame, his fans. And so when his label dropped him, he went to a different country. He started doing drugs, started getting drunk, and then he committed suicide.

He jumped off a balcony. Because his identity. It's sad. This is the reality that the world is facing without Jesus. His identity was in his music and his fame and what people looked at him and how people looked at him.

Instead of being rooted in Jesus, instead of understanding where our identity is and where our dependence is, that when we face rejection, when we face difficult times in life, when we face really hard times, that we're gonna. That every believer, every person in the world is gonna go through, Jesus wants us to recognize and have full dependence on him.

So as they're going out, he's telling them, hey, don't take any of this stuff because I want you to be dependent on you. Don't even wear. He tells them to take his staff. Don't even wear two tunics. And the reason why you don't wear two tunics is because they would travel in one, and then they'd have a clean one underneath when they got there.

Don't take two tunics. Wear sandals. Then he says, whenever you enter a house, stay there until you depart from there. And if any place will not receive you, and they will not listen to you when you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them. He's testifying that whenever you get there, God will provide.

Whenever you get there, God will provide and stay there. Preach the gospel. Share the word. And if somebody doesn't, if they are not responsive to the word, then it is not your responsibility. Their rejection, the rejection, the rejection that is found in the word, the world of the gospel message is not our responsibility.

It's our responsibility to go out and be a part of the mission, to go tell people about Jesus, to go tell people about the truth. But their response to it is not our responsibility. He tells them to walk out, take your sandals off, or just shake the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them. And so this is a. If you do a little reading, this is a tradition that jewish people would do when they were traveling through gentile lands, unclean lands.

When they would leave a gentile land, an unclean land, they would take off their sandals and beat the dust from their feet. This is a tradition that as you were leaving an unclean land, you would do this. And Jesus is telling them that, hey, go preach the gospel. And if they don't, that is not your responsibility. They are an unclean land.

So beat the dust off your feet.

So the disciples went out and proclaimed that people should repent. And they cast out many demons and anointed with oil, many who were sick and healed them in verse 13. So they go and do this. Jesus sends them out, and they go and do this, just as we are called to go and do this, and Jesus does this. I mean, the disciples go and do this, and they cast out demons.

They anoint people with oil. And this is a. The anointing with oil is a reference to healing in the Old Testament, how they were. How they were called to anoint people with oil. And the reason why they did this is because they.

They wanted people to recognize that it was not them, that it was not them. The power wasn't coming from them. It was coming from God. They wanted people to recognize that the message that they had matched the miracles that they had or that they were given and that it all came from God, not them. They weren't making it up.

It wasn't just them.

The reality, though, is that Jesus knew that they were going to face rejection and persecution, which is why he tells them, be dependent on me. Because if you're dependent on me, you'll be able to do my work. And then the rejection and persecution that you experience are not your fault. They're not your responsibility. They're not for you to worry about.

And have you ever been in a situation where you just feel like. Feel like you have to dust your feet off? Where you feel like you've done everything you can and nothing is working? You ever had that. Had that experience where you're telling somebody about Jesus and you've been praying for them for years and they're going through a hard time or something like that, and they're just not getting it, or you're counseling somebody that's going through a really hard time, and you're trying to tell them where to go or what it looks like to love Jesus, and they're just not getting it, as nothing is working, and you feel like, man, I just.

I gotta dust my feet off and leave it up to God. The rejection and persecution that we experience or the rejection of the message of God or of Jesus is not our responsibility, okay? And Jesus is telling us, telling us that. That we should not find our dependence in our relationships with others or how they act. Now, oftentimes, as you.

As you walk through life, as you walk through life and you face rejection from family and friends or the world, as you're sharing the gospel with people, you're going to wonder, is there a limit to the rejection and persecution of the gospel and its messengers? And that's where the death of John the Baptist comes in. And it demonstrates us to us that, no, there's no limit to the rejection and persecution that we will face and the suffering that we might have to go through for the message of Jesus. Man, sorry if you feel like this is a downer message just talking about rejection and persecution and. But it's a reality.

It's a reality of our life that we are called to suffer for the message of Jesus. We might. We might. We are called to suffer for it. We are called.

And that might be legal persecution for some of us. We don't live in a country where death is often the case, where there's martyrs happening there are places in the world where that's happening to christians, where martyrdom is a regular thing for believers. We live in America, which is relatively safe. You have the occasional person who wants to come out, come in and shoot up her church or kill somebody because of their belief. But for the most part, we don't experience that suffering.

We might experience the suffering of somebody cutting off their relationship with us because they don't like that we love Jesus. You might experience friends who cut it off, family who cuts off. Maybe. Maybe your lifestyle looks a little bit different because we're called to preach the gospel. We're called to preach the truth and confront sin.

And when we do that, when we do that, the world takes offense. The world takes offense to that. And so the message through the death of John the Baptist here is that John preached repentance. John preached that Jesus was coming someone greater.

He also loved to call out people's sin and speak truth in people's lives. And the response to that, I mean, this is Herod marrying his brother's wife, and John is calling him out for that. And of course, Herodias is upset about that. He's saying, you're living in sin. And her response is, she wants him dead.

And I guarantee you that there are people in the world that would like to see every single believer in this room dead.

There are probably people in America that would like to see every believer in this room dead.

The world will hold grudges against the truth in calling out sin. The world holds grudges against us as believers for the truth in calling out sin.

It is one of the reasons why I think, Scott, you brought this up about the political rally. I'm not going to talk about politics. Super. A lot, all right. But it's one of the reasons why we have a party in America that has shifted drastically in the last 20 years, okay?

That it is not the same party that it was 20 years ago. It is a party. And I'm making a lot of people. I might be making you uncomfortable here. All right, that's fine.

I'm okay with it. We have a party in America that has shifted so dramatically that their entire platform is anti Christian.

They have a person who is running for office who, when it's stated that Jesus is Lordezhe, she states, you're at the wrong rally.

I'm not going to tell you who to vote for, but I am going to sit there and ask you if you're considering voting for a party and a platform whose character is so anti Christian.

Where are you at with your walk in the Lord. Now, I'm not saying that I love the other candidate or that the other candidate doesn't have problems.

Yes. Then the other party has problems. I think. I don't know if I shared this last week, but maybe I did.

I was listening to a podcast last week. It was Matt Chandler and Lecrae. They were sitting down and Matt Chandler came up with this. So I'm giving him credit for it. And he said that no matter for christians, when you're looking at it, both parties have issues.

You got one party who wants the kingdom but not the kingdom. You got the left who wants the kingdom but not the king, right. You got the right who wants the king but not the kingdom. They might profess and be Christians, but when you talk about immigration, when you talk about suffering in the world, there's some gaping holes there. And so I'm not saying that either party is good, but, but what I am saying is right now, as believers, when you look at two, you have one that is so clearly anti Christian.

So clearly anti Christian. As a believer, I'm not sure, and as a pastor, I'm not sure how any christian can stand up. And I would love to. If you have, if you're wanting to vote that way and you want to have a conversation with me, I would love to have that conversation because I genuinely want to hear how a believer can, can vote that way. When an entire.

Just go and read their platform and you can see that it's, and wow, this got super political. And I did not, I didn't have this written anywhere. But we are called, let's get back to the real thing right here. We are called to preach the gospel. We are called to preach the truth and confront sin in our lives every day.

If our desire is to follow Jesus, our desire should be living like him. And Jesus called us to a mission. Jesus lived a life where he continually both loved people, but he also called them to repentance. He called them to repentance. He called them to know him.

He called them back to God. He called them out of sin while loving them.

And there is a cost to following Christ. There is a cost of following Christ. There's a cost that we find in our family. There's a cost. And when we speak truth to the world, the world is predisposed to reject us.

As followers of Christ, we should expect rejection, suffering and persecution. But as followers of Christ in America, we have become used to acceptance and comfortability.

We are no longer a church that preaches the gospel. In our everyday life, we are no longer a church that demonstrates people the love of Jesus Christ in every action that we take, that our desire is that Jesus should shine through every facet of our life. There shouldn't be a moment or a person in your life that doesn't know that you love Jesus and you follow Jesus. But we have become a church so focused on our comfortability and our acceptance that we have forgotten that the world first hated Christ and the world will hate us and that we should expect rejection and suffering and persecution. Charles Simeon, who was a leader of an evangelical evangelical revival, says this.

He says, persecution for righteousness sake is what every child of God must expect. It's going to come from every direction, family, friends, the world at large, at work.

Because if you're showing people Jesus, if you're preaching the gospel, if you're sharing truth, and don't get me wrong, don't be a jerk about it. Share truth in love. If you cannot love somebody, then don't share truth to them. Because the most loving thing you can do is to share that truth in a way that will relate to them and not turn them off. They're already going to be predisposed to reject Christ.

It doesn't mean that we have to compromise on the truth, but do it in a way. Share the truth in a way that is loving to them. But expect rejection, expect persecution, and it's going to come from every direction. In fact, if you're not living a life where you're experiencing rejection and difficulty, then you, my friend, need to look really hard to make sure that you're not in the sweet caress of the comfort of Satan.

Comfort is one of our biggest idols in the american church, in Americans. And it can make us ignore a lot of things.

And so if you're not experiencing rejection or difficulty in relationships and places because of your witness of Jesus, man, you need to look at your life and say, am I demonstrating Jesus to people? Do people know that I'm a believer? The devil wants us to be comfortable, and churches and individuals can get in those comfort zones, and they're like, well, I'm not going to change because I'm super comfortable here. So if I change a little bit, I'm going to be uncomfortable. Even though it might reach the world, it might reach people for Jesus.

If I change this about the church service or this about the church or this about my life, we might reach more people for Jesus if we change something about our life. But because we're comfortable in our lives, we sit there and say, I don't want to do it. Francis Chan has a book called the Forgotten God about the Holy Spirit. And he talks about quenching the Holy Spirit. There's so oftentimes he talks about how many times in churches you're sitting there in your chairs, in your pews and the Holy Spirit is convicting you of something, a life change that needs to happen.

It might be going to the mission field. There might be somebody in this room that is being convicted right now by the Holy Spirit to go on the mission field. And your desire is going to be more for comfort and safety than your desire is for Jesus. And you're going to tell the Holy Spirit, no, I don't want to do that because I want to be comfortable and I want to be safe. That's called quenching the Holy Spirit.

It might be, it might. That's a drastic one. It might be that, you know, a lost co worker work and, and the Holy Spirit is saying, tomorrow I want you to have that conversation. I want you to tell them about Jesus. And you're sitting there saying, well, I don't want to lose the most friend and it's going to make things awkward.

And so I don't want to have that conversation. So I'm not going to have it.

It might be talking to your kids about it.

It might be making the decision that your kids don't go. I drove by the Topeka soccer fields office 75 this morning. Hundreds of families and kids out there playing soccer on a Sunday morning. It might be that you tell your kids and you tell your kids, we're not going to go do soccer on a Sunday morning because Jesus is more important and you have to tell the coach that. And you're like, let's make things awkward, so we'll just go.

Jesus should be our number one desire and we should expect rejection and suffering and persecution when we do that. It, because the world is not going to understand. But if we have dependence on God, if our dependence is on God and our desires for God, then that doesn't matter.

All right, let's pray.